Markets Work Better When More Voices Are Heard

"Fear rarely disappears before taking the first step," says Leticia. "But once you take it, it disappears and inertia takes over."

More than twenty years ago, that step led her into industrial real estate. She recalls that at the time, it seemed like an unglamorous sector, and wondered whether it was really a space for her, especially because brokerage was almost entirely dominated by men.

Over time, she came to understand something she now often repeats: many of the barriers people perceive when entering a sector are not in the market itself, but in how it is imagined from the outside. Once inside, prejudice stops mattering and what remains is the work.

In industrial real estate—she says—that work rarely repeats itself. Each project forces you to understand operations, industries, and different client needs. For that reason, rather than waiting for fear to disappear, her recommendation is to enter, learn, and let experience do the rest.

"Fear usually appears precisely where there is still no path. Many spaces seem closed until someone decides to cross them. The same holds in real estate, where many of the sector's frontiers are unwritten. They exist as long as no one crosses them… and more and more women have decided to do so."

CREW is a sign of that change.

Teresa puts a contrast on the table. In Mexico's construction industry, approximately 4% of the workforce is women; in the real estate services sector, the figure approaches 40%.

Throughout her career—which has taken her from architecture to the corporate real estate business—she has been in boardrooms more than once where she was the only woman. That experience made one important difference in the market clear to her: "More women are working in the industry today, but there are still few participating in strategic decision-making."

For Teresa, the key is not only who gets the position, but who has the opportunity to compete for it. In that sense, she notes that one reason for that gap lies in something less visible than talent or preparation: professional networks.

"For a long time, men developed very strong professional networks," she says. "Women have had a harder time building them." That is why organizations like CREW matter, as they seek precisely to strengthen those connections within the real estate sector.

"A professional network is not your group of friends," she explains. "It is a network of people who help you grow, learn, and generate business opportunities."

Teresa has spent more than 30 years in the sector. She belongs to a generation that entered the industry when many of these conversations did not even exist.

"In the nineties, anything went," she recalls. "There were no clear rules about discrimination or professional treatment. You simply learned to defend your place at the table." That is why she believes progress does not depend on imposing quotas or forcing outcomes, but on something more basic: truly opening the processes where decisions are made.

"When a company looks for someone for a leadership position," she notes, "the minimum should be that women are also considered in that process." Because the problem is not usually a lack of talent. It is that real competition often never even happens.

Montserrat believes the real estate sector now faces a different challenge than it did a decade ago. It is no longer just about opening the conversation around female leadership, but about proving with facts that change is actually happening.

"We have made progress," she says, "but not necessarily at the pace that talent and market competitiveness demand. A clear example is that the wage gap persists even at high levels of specialization and leadership, which shows that equal opportunity is still not a full reality."

The challenge now is different: moving from discourse to evidence.

"We have to demonstrate with data the economic impact of diversity," she says. "The participation of women leaders drives innovation, competitiveness, and results."

In that sense, the conversation about diversity in the real estate sector stops being only a matter of representation or fairness and also becomes a matter of business competitiveness. For that reason, from her upcoming presidency at CREW Mexico, her goal is to promote concrete actions, metrics, and measurable commitments within the industry.

Because when something starts being measured, it also starts being compared. That is when a conversation stops being aspiration and becomes a market standard, Montserrat explains.

Natalia came into real estate almost by accident. More than twenty years ago, an interview at Cushman & Wakefield that seemed destined for a receptionist position ended in something else: "They told me I didn't have the character to be a receptionist. That I had the character of a broker."

Over time, she realized that mastering the market—prices, trends, availability, contracts—was not enough. The decisive change in her career came when she stopped studying only hard skills and began working on leadership, negotiation, and people management.

"For a long time, I thought that to work in a male-dominated market I had to behave like them," she recalls. "Then I realized the value lies precisely in the opposite."

In her experience, diversity is not only an abstract principle but a concrete advantage in transactions.

"If everyone thinks the same inside the box, there is no room for a different negotiation," she says.

What Natalia suggests, at its core, is something broader: a market where everyone thinks the same does not only exclude; it also negotiates worse. Consequently, beyond political correctness, diversity adds value by introducing questions, nuances, and solutions that a homogeneous market often fails to see.

Part of that change, she says, also involves building professional networks where those different perspectives can meet. That is where an individual difference begins to turn into a collective advantage for the sector.

Jimena was part of the small group that helped launch CREW Mexico. The process was not immediate: for almost two years, they worked on the legal and organizational aspects necessary to consolidate the institution locally.

"It was a project that started with pure passion," she recalls. "We knew that Mexico needed to push female leadership in the sector more," since nationally, "only 2% of real estate leaders are women."

Her own career also reflects how the market has changed.

Trained as an architect, her work for many years focused on project design. Over time, she realized that to grow within real estate, technical specialization was not enough.

"You cannot stay only in your discipline," she says. "You have to understand the whole business: alliances, clients, strategy." That learning—she adds—is rarely taught in universities. That is why she insists that younger generations should also be trained in sales, numbers, and business development.

"You can be excellent at what you do," she explains. "But if you don't understand how projects are generated and how they are sustained, your growth will always have a limit." "Look at the outcome of projects," she notes.

From her perspective, the real estate sector functions as an ecosystem where multiple specialties, decisions, and professional relationships converge. Understanding how all those pieces connect—and working with the people who make them possible—is what ultimately allows someone to build a career within the sector.